We all know that Google’s Universal search is altering the way that users interct with Google’s search interface. Instead of just links to websites, media clips, images, audio clips, new articles, maps, book reviews, restaurant reviews and more are showing up in the search results. The question at hand is whether or not those results will supplement the traditional sites, or actually replace those in the rankings.

I had the opportunity to pose this question directly to Google, at both the SES conference in New York in March, and the Google Webmaster Help Chat session.

At the SES conference in New York Jack Menzel director of the universal search program stated that currently Universal searches are only showing up for a limited number of searches, and while there are several versions out it has not been decided. This seems to be the company line, as you can see how Susan Moskwa fielded my concern.

Q: Will Universal Image search results REPLACE links to sites? I.e. Instead of 10 sites plus images, will we see 1 image, 1 video and 8 sites?

Susan Moskwa – 9:43 am

A: We’re constantly testing what works well in our search results, including whether differenty types of universal results are “additive” or will replace one of the 10 web results. For now I’d say, stay tuned.

Why does that relate to image optimization? Because images and multimedia will be showing up in the organic search results more often, so it is critical that you optimize your pictures as best as possible. Use these Guidlines for your images to make sure gets them placed according to their relevant topics.

• Add Alt Text to your Images
• Don’t Stuff the keywords with anything other than an accurate description of your picture. Around 80-100 characters is a good rule of thumb
• Have relevant text surrounding your image
• provide quality photos, Google does pay attention to image quality when possible
• name the file something that relates to it’s subject matter

For Example if I were optimizing this image here of a Domo Kun Penguin, then I would place it close to the text that talks about the Domo Kun Penguin and apply the tips above.

Listen to the Domo Kun Penguin and your images will be optimized!

Update: I am please to say that Google sees my blog as #1 for Domo kun Penguin Now just waiting to see if the image gets picked up in image search as well. (for editoral purposes it should be noted that the picture and page were added to mixx.com and stumble upon).

This also reinforces my previous post about how quickly blogs are ranking for new keywords, since that post was made less than 24 hours and already is #1 for that keyword.